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May/June 2000 | Contents
NETWORK TELEVISION NEWS: WITH FEAR AND FAVOR
BY LOWELL BERGMAN
I spent twenty-one years in network television mostly as a producer for television newsmagazines, first at ABC and for sixteen years at CBS.
Now I am out. A gradual process, hastened by the movie, The Insider, has led me to begin thinking about what the realities are behind the camera and the stories you see on network television news. The movie does something that you cannot do on network television news: it raises the issue of corporate censorship and, more importantly, self-censorship, and it explores both its implications and the choices it forces on those involved. Its subject, of course, is CBS's decision in 1995 to not air a 60 Minutes report on Jeffrey Wigand, the former vice president of Brown & Williamson who charged that the company had hid the truth about tobacco's addictive and harmful properties from the American public.
Executives of the network news divisions say that they will report any story of public interest and import without fear or favor, without considering its potential commercial consequences. They say that, but do not believe it.
The menu of what stories will be initiated, what enterprise reporting will and will not be done is formed by the networks' commercial interest. The idea of committing resources to do stories that in and of themselves are clearly in the public interest is dead. The exceptions prove the rule.
Now, it has always been difficult no matter where you worked in the media to propose a story that might affect a major advertiser, the publisher-owner, or his business partners.
The problem today especially in television news is that any obligation to report stories about unaccountable power, about individuals or institutions that are as powerful as you are, as your broadcast company is, has been lost. It was an ideal that television news strived for in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam war. But it is an ideal that has died in the wake of deregulation and the unfettered growth of corporate power.
This censorship is rarely a result of external pressure. More often it is self-censorship that appears inside the company and is presented as common sense. That is what happened in the tobacco story. Brown & Williamson lawyers did not threaten to sue. They did not have to. That is what has changed.
I would venture that no assignment editor at the evening news broadcasts or executive producer at a so-called newsmagazine program would hesitate to pursue, or spend money pursuing, enterprise stories about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, O.J. Simpson, the Princess Di car crash, or the death of JFK Jr. Unfortunately, that commitment is not matched when it comes to stories about who wields unaccountable power over our lives; or who is behind the corporate mergers that now dominate the media.
That was what happened in the Brown & Williamson case in 1995. CBS's general counsel, Ellen Kaden, opposed airing the Brown & Williamson story. At a meeting I attended to discuss the situation, neither Don Hewitt or Mike Wallace exhibited any of their well-known ability to argue, cajole, and intimidate.
At a later meeting, Kaden reported outside counsel had supported her position. I knew the story was dead but argued with Hewitt and Wallace that we should not take orders from lawyers. What do CBS executives have to say?
They dismissed me for splitting hairs. As Hewitt put it: "You can't do the story!" But, I persisted. So on the morning of October 3, 1995, just to be absolutely clear that I knew what I was dealing with, I called Eric Ober, who was then the president of CBS News.
I said, "You sat in the meeting yesterday, Eric." (He had been very quiet, saying little.) "These are lawyers giving advice, what is the position of CBS News on this matter?" And without missing a beat, he replied, "The corporation will not risk its assets on the story." Period.
[CBS eventually ran the story after canceling the original airing.]
Let me make it clear that I came out of print in the 1970s, and it was no surprise to me, based on stories I had done back then with various publishers ranging from Rolling Stone to Penthouse to the Hearst Corporation, that corporate interest obviously has an editorial influence over what publications will do and not do. It's a given.
So you know what the limits are. But a way of gauging a publication or broadcast is to find out how close they will let you get to that limit.
For example, I discovered at ABC News that you could not do an enterprise story about a supplier or a major advertiser. You could try to do it but you were taking a lot of risks getting close to the limit. In one case we did manage to get a story on about the president of ABC, Inc. and his financial relationship to a supplier -- Aaron Spelling. It slipped in during the summertime and led to all kinds of fallout, including a speculative financial magazine piece alleging that somehow the president of ABC News, Roone Arledge, might be using the story to get his boss's job. Arledge did not even know about the story when it ran.
This was such an exception that it prompted unwarranted speculation that there must be some corporate conspiracy going, jockeying for power. The exception proves the rule.
Conflict of interest was true then and is true today. The best example: If you are the owner of an NFL team you have a virtual free pass, in terms of network television news. The network will not initiate a critical story about your business practices and history. No in-depth story will be commissioned. I was told that, at ABC News in 1981 in a meeting with an executive producer. At CBS News in 1997 the prohibition was repeated by a senior executive and a major on-camera personality.
I knew at the time that one of the NFL owners, Eddie DeBartolo, Jr. was under grand jury investigation in New Orleans for bribery related to his gambling license. The whole issue of professional sports and the vast cash business around gambling has always fascinated me. Given the fact CBS did not have football, I figured there was a chance that we could do the story. I was wrong.
That fall I taught a seminar at the University of California's Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley. Anticipating that the story would break in time, I got four of the students to work on it. I knew that whether or not CBS wanted to do it, now there would at least be follow-up coverage. Once a story becomes public -- someone else does it in print, for example -- then you can put pictures in it for a television version. Sure enough it all broke with an indictment in December 1997.
Remember, CBS did not have football. I had been told by the executive and on-air talent six months earlier that the one thing CBS's new c.e.o., Mel Karmazin, really wanted, was to get football back. So there was no way we could do any enterprise reporting about the NFL's owners even if they might be caught up in criminal activity.
But now the event had happened. DeBartolo had been indicted. CBS still did not have football. Due to my post-tobacco re-negotiation I was no longer a staffer at 60 Minutes, but I worked for all of CBS News. But I soon learned that due to the headlines there was 60 Minutes interest in an in-depth piece. I thought, "Great." I've got these files. I've got the students who had already explored Eddie DeBartolo, Jr.'s, other legal problems. And his family history. I was in contact with the 49er organization and its then chief operating officer Carmen Policy.
Everything was set up. I got together with a 60 Minutes producer, associate producer, and correspondent and it was agreed that we would do the story. I would co-produce and be the field person since I live in the San Francisco Bay area. Four weeks later, CBS signed up NFL football. Two weeks after that, I received a phone call saying that 60 Minutes was no longer interested in doing the piece because "the 49ers didn't get in the Super Bowl." Bemused, I said well fine, but I've got Carmen Policy and all these people in the 49er organization interested and ready to let us shoot spring practice and the post season. Why not do it, as we often did at 60 Minutes, for the fall.
No, came the response. Not interested. End of story.
All of this is anecdotal information. A number of my colleagues have said to me that "Gee, this has never happened to me. No one has ever told me I could not do a story because of its content!" And in most cases I would agree. It is rare to have a story killed, an interview pulled. Usually the circumstances are much more subtle, the reasons are usually something like: "Who will go on camera?" "It's boring"; or "No one cares and no one will watch."
As a result, the reality of the world of news and information has regressed, especially in broadcasting. "News" no longer means what it once did. The very forms used by the broadcast news organizations emphasizing the "star" correspondent over the substance of the story has undermined their credibility. It is no surprise then that the commitment of media organizations to reporting without fear or favor has waned. And so today, it is more difficult than ever to do what so many of us had hoped we could do.
A prediction: There once was a fire wall between the commercial-entertainment side and the public service "news" side of broadcasting. That fire wall has been breached. It is the specter haunting the broadcast "news" business today. Soon an organization in the broadcast, cable or more likely dot.com convergence world will understand that, and a launch a new "news" outlet that will deserve the name and have in place a new fire wall that we can trust. *
Lowell Bergman was executive producer of the 60 Minutes report on smoking that CBS held up in 1995--and that incident became the subject of the movie, The Insider. This article is adapted from a talk he gave at New York University earlier this year.
